Vtech still make kid's toys, my 6 year old second cousin has a Dora The Explorer computer thing made by Vtech, I was playing with it over the weekend, it's for a very young age group as you'd expect for Dora The Explorer. I laughed when you entered RUclips and uxwbill into Speak And Read, and I also laughed when you connected it to the stereo system. I love the Apple voices, I use the all the time on my iMac, Mac OS 10.7 also had the Nuance Communications RealSpeak voices.
I think that the reason that the say "maths" in the other parts in the world is because when you do math it involves in more than one number. But that could just be me.
I never had a TI talking toy, but friends of mine had them, I had 2 Vtech talking toys, Talking Lesson One (you may know it as the Sears Talking Computron), and I also had the Pre Computer 1000 Junior which I still have to this day. I love Speak And Spell, I wish I'd had one as a kid, I'm tempted to get one on eBay. Like you I don't care much for Circuit Bending. You don't know how excited I was when I saw this video showing up. I haven't used S&R or S&M since I was 8 or so.
the speak and toys are super interesting!! ^_^ i do have to agree the speak and read does sound rather disappointed when it cant read a word, almost makes you feel bad for it >_
actually... looking into it more it makes it twice as sad since when it comes across it word it doesnt know it will take longer to load than a normal word it does know.. it is looking desperately for the word to not dissapoint you...
Speech synthesis has definatly improoved over the years, but I don't think I can say the same for speech recognition. I tried this video with the closed captions on to see if it would recognise the Speak & (insert name of toy here), but it only gets a couple of words. "it" and "the" only seem to come up, even if it doesn't say those!
Thanks for this awesome video. I’ve recently acquired the Speak and Spell, Maths and just bought the Speak and read (not many on eBay so got from abroad). I had the speak and spell and maths as a young child in the early 80s. Always wants the “ET version” with buttons and delighted to now have one. Thanks again.
Yep, I had a Speak N Spell when I was growing up. Also listened to a band who used it has an instrument. Thumbs up if you know of or listen to Kraftwerk. (:
I had one when I was a kid! brings back memories of just random stuff....it was thrown out or given to sombody in the mid 90's when we found it in our basement though...
I too am not a fan of circuit bending, Like you said i know there not alive and can't feel pain. But hearing devices make those sounds bothers me. And if i renumber correctly the voice chip was also used in one of the Atari game system add ons.
My wife brought me home a gift of a speak and spell that used to be hers that she found at her mom's house. If you pop open the cartridge, you'll see that there is a DIP packaged chip with only one side of the legs soldered and the other side just sticking out.
I am blind so when I was in elementary school I got to see the first talking computers by Apple, I got to be on the news, my friend Megan and I show them how it worked, we got to be on the 6 o’clock news that night.
I got the Apple 2E and I am also blind. I remember using the only word processor that was available to us at the time. Do you remember Word Talk? It was great for its day, but soon Word Perfect took over, and now Word and JAWS and Voiceover. I had the Speak N Spell and Speak N Math with the Braille Keypad. Did you ever have the TI Magic Wand Reader? I got that for Christmas and it was useable, but complicated as you had to run the barcode scanner over particular parts of the book you were reading.
Hi uxwbill, I had a 1984 Chrysler Newyorker with the EVA System in it, which sounded exactly the same as your speak and spell. Sadly rust was the demise of that futuristic car. As a kid I also played with the speak and math. Absolutely love your channel.
Hey, about the Circuit benders, at least they are finding another use for them and not sending them off to be broken up into bits and pieces at recycling centers T_T
Now the speaker still did have a revived reboot, but instead of having a vacuum fluorescent display like the old ones do instead it has a very boring and plain LCD screen with a numeric or alpha numeric display
I had the one all the way to the left!! I don't know where it went... wow Bill. First video I see when I wake up one of my old childhood toys. But I'm 23 so I wasn't born until 88 but I still had one.
I agree, I’m a kid at heart too and I never grew up either even though I’m an adult now Ha ha ha I love it. You’re never too old to be a kid, I love this video you are bringing me back to my childhood. I got the speak and spell for Christmas and they also had the speak and math.
Lots of ham repeaters use the TI synthesizer to identify themselves, and have done so for years. I started out with the button keypad for the Speak N Spell, and then moved onto a membrane keyboard with Braille for both the Speak N Spell as well as the Speak N Math. As someone was saying speech output has come a long way since those days. I use VoiceOver on my phone where I am posting this comment now, and a program on my PC called JAWS for Windows.
As you say, electronic toys don't have feelings and emotions, but one of the things I really hate about Circuit Bending is that you need to drill holes into the plastic casing in order to install the switches and knobs, and I'd really hate to hear the sound of the drill drilling into the plastic casing to make the holes if you follow my meaning.
You know, I read on Wikipedia that there were cartridge interfaces for Speak and Spell that allowed the toy to interface with computers like the Commodore 64 apparently, I don't know if that's true or not, but if it is that may be something worth looking up.
Maths was pluralised in some countries, such as the UK, because we say "Maths" as where Americans say "Math". Not sure why, just one of those quirks between our dialects.
Well one of the big problems with modern TTS voices is that they do use samples instead of synth for the phonims wich limmets the inflection you can put into the pronounceation and inflection dictenary (man my spelling is bad today) one voice witch i like is actuily based off sam most of the time it's named mike or pawl with the rite reader it has good inflection. and the early 80's rigs your thinking of were based on the decktalk speech board if memory serves. (more)
Circuit bending makes me quite uncomfortable as well. I own all 3, all original from my childhood. Got the Speak and Spell Christmas of 1988, and the Read and Math versions later in 1989. I do have the book for my Speak and Read, and also the original TI AC adapter for these. The EVA system in Chrysler vehicles had additional circuitry to clean up and smooth out the audio a bit more to make it sound more natural. I'll make a video response to this video this weekend.
I still have a Speak & spell, Speak & math, Speak & read and the Ti99 With the speech synthesizer. All good as new. I do agree with you. circuit bending is bad. My units live in glass boxes in my repairs room. I did play with them for a long time
(Continued) The day the SB Pro and SB16's came out with there fm speech synth was a red letter day for me :) alltho they have programs such as jaws and deskspeek as a visualy impard person i dont need every little thing red out to me. i just want what i tell the pc to read spoken. comming back to SB 16 there was an app called Text-Assist wich was WONDERFUL (i still prefer the defualt voices in it) i used it upto windows ME or XP one. it finaly had so many compatiblity problems i had change.
The Speak And Spell Compact didn't have a VFD readout, or indeed any readout as far as I know, I've not used one, but I've seen pictures of them. Electronic Braille displays are certainly around now, but they're not cheap, I don't know if braille displays were around in the early 80's though, having said that I think the TSI VersaBraille portable computer had one, but I've not used one.
@@uxwbill...thank you. I have Speak and spell emulator in .swf file. I'm searching the other two...can you help me to find them, please? P.S.: If you didn't know, there is a fantastic VST effect plugin, which have similar characteristics of these ending 1970s-starting 1980s wonderful electronic toys. You can see here: ruclips.net/video/bg7ACJrsqM0/видео.html In my country Speak and spell is known as "GRILLO PARLANTE". In the 1980s this electronic toy game was successfully bought and acquired by a lot of childrens and little boys.
I remember all the smart kids had these. My brothers and I had Mattel Football and Basketball, :P. All this talk about Math/Maths makes me wonder if there are different versions of Speak & Spell that cater to the British and others' 'overuse' of the letter "U?"
Maybe I shouldn't be asking this question, but have you ever played with or are you in any way interested in any of the children's talking animatronic cassette based toys like Teddy Ruxpin? If so, what do you think of such toys like that? Have you ever played with any of them?
There's a software called qbox pro that can encode audio to be run through the synth chip. It was developed by the people who made the Texas instruments LPC tech. It only runs on Windows 3.1/3.11 What's cool too is you can hear what the speech will sound like after coding within the software itself. The software allows for a max of 30 seconds to be encoded. I once encoded some a Capella of Freddy Mercury singing "we are the champions" One clip that I encoded made some strange results. Thing too is the coded sample audio can be dropped into audacity without importing it raw even though it's not .wav
I only ever used the speak & spell (well and the little professor). I used to get so angry that the speak & spell would invariably ask me to spell "zero," but it always pronounced it like "gyro"-the delicious greek wrap. It was years before I realized my mistake, but I always left hungry for tzatziki.
Some of the Speak N Spell's pronunciations are definitely odd. I've forgotten what they were, but I ran across some words where I couldn't tell what it was saying.
@@uxwbill I think I spelled that mispronounced word more than a thousand times. Luckily there was always Tetris waiting for us in the basement of her dark abode.
I also have that very wrong feeling when it comes to dismantling or modifying toys all the time and it is even more prevalent when it comes to toys that are or are similar to toys of my childhood.
if you look up the song HEaven says. wich is not a song about heaven at all. but its a really cool song. anyways. the lyrics were sung using the speak & spell in the middle
Oh, cool. I have a flat panel one that works. Also a button one that seems NOT to work, but has all the old style buttons & battery cover. AND a speak & read that works with battery cover. I was going to yard sale the speak & read and throw in the button one. Do you need them for like just postage? I won't get anything much on a yard sale, and don't want to throw them out. Little storage space. Keeping my flat panel one as I too, like it so much! Thank you for the video and explaining a bit about them. Not sure how to get ahead of you.
i'm so deprived, i never had one of these as a kid. what i remember the most from my early childhood is the See & Say's. those were interesting. still interesting, because they use a little record inside.
Really? Did someone make Braille labels and put the on your Speak And Spell's keyboard, or did it come from the factory pre-brailled? My best friend is totally blind and he too had these toys, but his units had braille labels stuck to them, I assume his parents did that.
have you ever seen the Chryslers of the 80s ? They had a talking alert system using the same voice as the speak n spell. It's even made by Texas instruments for Chrysler. Unfortunately cars with these features are uncommon.
Hay uxwbill, I went to my mother's home today and I remembered that I had a Speak and Spell and Speak and Read,when I plugged in the cartridge from the Spell into the Read it gave an error,But on the Speck and Spell it just ignored it.Just thought you would be interested to know.
Speak N Spell...'Makes Learning Fun!' I've still got the Speak N Spell from my childhood...He's called Larry Nobody is bending Larry...We've been though a lot together! Very enjoyable video Bill...Thank You from both of us! Larry says "Spell Question"...haha!!! :)
The noise I'm talking about can be heard @14:19, I know later on there's more noise when you connect Speak And Read to the stereo system and you did make a comment about that, but the noise @14:19 sounds like interference from the camcorder, but again I could be wrong. I hope you get years and years out of enjoyment out of these things. I know Speak And Spell made an appearance in your more recent soda video, but will you use them in future videos? I hope so.
Yeah, if I remember correctly, up to 8 characters could fit in the display. One of the things I've noticed is that Mystery Word, Spell and Say It never had words containing the apostrophe. At least, even with the expansion module that my dad added to Speak & Spell. I can also remember a TV commercial with ET that was about a module with words from the movie like "HOME". Without a module, and if you press the module button, it could make funny noises as if it were circuit-bent. :-]
Ah yes the good old Speak and Spell! Had many hours of fun as a child with the built in games (we didn't have any of the cartridges). I don't think the push-button version made it over here as all the English ones I've seen have the membrane keyboard. The question repetition was always a laugh! Mine's still boxed up in the loft. I was thinking of giving it to my niece when she's old enough to play with it. I wouldn't sell it even though it would probably fetch a small fortune.
There were these other talking toys from Texas Instruments called the Super Speak & Spell and Super Speak & Math and i think there was also a Super Speak & Read as well but I'm not entirely sure about the Super Speak & Read
@@inkpastaI thought so because I thought I saw a picture of it online but out of this trio the Speak&Read was my favourite I used to have one but it stop working even with fresh battery I have the other 2 as well as the Super Speak&Math and the Super Speak&Spell but one day I hope to get another Speak&Read one day and perhaps even get the Super Speak&Read
Maybe if you insert a lowpass filter into the audio line (or turn the treble all the way down on the ampllifier), the speech of the speak&read should sound even better. Also I very much like the idea of implementing breathing noises into speech synthesis. I actually had the same idea years ago, but no big software house has made a speech synth that way.
hey uxwbill, I noticed that this video of these 3 texas instruments speaking toys was uploaded before user spatsbear2's video of these toys, so how did you know about his chrysler car which talked kinda like these speaking toys?
Considering i rely on voice over on my ipad and a program called readplease on my main PC i realy do know how far voice tech has gotten :) i must say tho the voice on your little mac was new and clean. the voice pack on RP is a little out of date (win xp ish) but it does have good inflection for the preticuler voice i'm using :) It's a far cry from decktalk on the apple ii :) Note to folks who make talking assist programs. Think of us partily sighted folks would ya :)
I think my best friend had a talking telephone toy that vaguely fits your description, if you're in any way interested, you could look into Teddy Ruxpin, I say go for it, I have several of them and I love them a lot, I've made videos about it for RUclips.
Wasn't this kind of toy not used in Toy Story as Mr. Spell? I think it was a different toy based on the Speak n Spel. You all probably knew that, just wanted to point that out. Very interesting video Bill. Cheers.
+John Michael Stock Production continued into the 90s and some new models appeared, including one that teaches music with simple exercises. I have one of these. There were also some "story book" speaking toys made by TI as well.
+John Michael Stock Yes there are. Mine has the original, failure prone keyboard. TI revised the design by switching the membrane keyboard shown on the Speak & Read and the Speak & Math.
This has absolutely nothing to do with the subject of this video, but over the past week or so I've noticed that the RUclips player has changed and now allows you to change playback speed and video quality, but there are fewer quality settings now I see, that's something that i don't like. I see however that this video at least is using the older style player, how do I revert my RUclips videos to the older style player? I find the older player to be faster to load and it's more reliable.
Maths is short for Mathematics. It is here in the UK anyway. Since the English invented it, ours is the correct spelling! I am only joking before people start or starts!! Words and language are a very strange thing! Great video by the way!
Mathematics is a collective singular noun, not plural, so hearing someone say "my favorite subject is maths" just sounds awkward and wrong. And if you look up the history, "mathematics" was first abbreviated to "math." (including the period); eventually the period was dropped in the 1870s, while Brits didn't start adding the S to make "maths" until the 1910s, so "math" without the S is actually the older way to shorten it.
Vtech still make kid's toys, my 6 year old second cousin has a Dora The Explorer computer thing made by Vtech, I was playing with it over the weekend, it's for a very young age group as you'd expect for Dora The Explorer. I laughed when you entered RUclips and uxwbill into Speak And Read, and I also laughed when you connected it to the stereo system. I love the Apple voices, I use the all the time on my iMac, Mac OS 10.7 also had the Nuance Communications RealSpeak voices.
We bought a similar product for our early 80's children. Now, you need children to benefit from these.
I think that the reason that the say "maths" in the other parts in the world is because when you do math it involves in more than one number. But that could just be me.
I never had a TI talking toy, but friends of mine had them, I had 2 Vtech talking toys, Talking Lesson One (you may know it as the Sears Talking Computron), and I also had the Pre Computer 1000 Junior which I still have to this day. I love Speak And Spell, I wish I'd had one as a kid, I'm tempted to get one on eBay. Like you I don't care much for Circuit Bending. You don't know how excited I was when I saw this video showing up. I haven't used S&R or S&M since I was 8 or so.
the speak and toys are super interesting!! ^_^ i do have to agree the speak and read does sound rather disappointed when it cant read a word, almost makes you feel bad for it >_
actually... looking into it more it makes it twice as sad since when it comes across it word it doesnt know it will take longer to load than a normal word it does know.. it is looking desperately for the word to not dissapoint you...
Speech synthesis has definatly improoved over the years, but I don't think I can say the same for speech recognition. I tried this video with the closed captions on to see if it would recognise the Speak & (insert name of toy here), but it only gets a couple of words. "it" and "the" only seem to come up, even if it doesn't say those!
Thanks for this awesome video. I’ve recently acquired the Speak and Spell, Maths and just bought the Speak and read (not many on eBay so got from abroad). I had the speak and spell and maths as a young child in the early 80s. Always wants the “ET version” with buttons and delighted to now have one. Thanks again.
Yep, I had a Speak N Spell when I was growing up. Also listened to a band who used it has an instrument. Thumbs up if you know of or listen to Kraftwerk. (:
I had one when I was a kid! brings back memories of just random stuff....it was thrown out or given to sombody in the mid 90's when we found it in our basement though...
Texas Instruments makes literally everything. They run T3, they made the Speak and Spell and on top of that, they make graphing calculators.
I too am not a fan of circuit bending, Like you said i know there not alive and can't feel pain. But hearing devices make those sounds bothers me.
And if i renumber correctly the voice chip was also used in one of the Atari game system add ons.
My wife brought me home a gift of a speak and spell that used to be hers that she found at her mom's house. If you pop open the cartridge, you'll see that there is a DIP packaged chip with only one side of the legs soldered and the other side just sticking out.
I am blind so when I was in elementary school I got to see the first talking computers by Apple, I got to be on the news, my friend Megan and I show them how it worked, we got to be on the 6 o’clock news that night.
I got the Apple 2E and I am also blind. I remember using the only word processor that was available to us at the time. Do you remember Word Talk? It was great for its day, but soon Word Perfect took over, and now Word and JAWS and Voiceover. I had the Speak N Spell and Speak N Math with the Braille Keypad. Did you ever have the TI Magic Wand Reader? I got that for Christmas and it was useable, but complicated as you had to run the barcode scanner over particular parts of the book you were reading.
Hi uxwbill, I had a 1984 Chrysler Newyorker with the EVA System in it, which sounded exactly the same as your speak and spell. Sadly rust was the demise of that futuristic car. As a kid I also played with the speak and math. Absolutely love your channel.
Hey, about the Circuit benders, at least they are finding another use for them and not sending them off to be broken up into bits and pieces at recycling centers T_T
Oldsmobiles also had that as an option too where the car would tell you if the lights where on the car would say the lights are on .
Now the speaker still did have a revived reboot, but instead of having a vacuum fluorescent display like the old ones do instead it has a very boring and plain LCD screen with a numeric or alpha numeric display
I had the one all the way to the left!! I don't know where it went... wow Bill. First video I see when I wake up one of my old childhood toys. But I'm 23 so I wasn't born until 88 but I still had one.
I agree, I’m a kid at heart too and I never grew up either even though I’m an adult now Ha ha ha I love it. You’re never too old to be a kid, I love this video you are bringing me back to my childhood. I got the speak and spell for Christmas and they also had the speak and math.
I think Kraftwerk used a talking language translator made by TI in Numbers and also in Computer World.
Lachlant1984 Speak and Spell is also used in Home Computer or Heim Computer.
Lots of ham repeaters use the TI synthesizer to identify themselves, and have done so for years. I started out with the button keypad for the Speak N Spell, and then moved onto a membrane keyboard with Braille for both the Speak N Spell as well as the Speak N Math. As someone was saying speech output has come a long way since those days. I use VoiceOver on my phone where I am posting this comment now, and a program on my PC called JAWS for Windows.
At least one of those someones was me, as you can hear in the video toward the end. We've even managed to come a bit further since this was recorded.
I had the yellow and the gray one when I was a kid. But the one I wanted the most was the red one.
As you say, electronic toys don't have feelings and emotions, but one of the things I really hate about Circuit Bending is that you need to drill holes into the plastic casing in order to install the switches and knobs, and I'd really hate to hear the sound of the drill drilling into the plastic casing to make the holes if you follow my meaning.
I love your videos. Keep up the good work.
I liked these! I bought one for my nephew and ended up playing with it myself for hours.
You know, I read on Wikipedia that there were cartridge interfaces for Speak and Spell that allowed the toy to interface with computers like the Commodore 64 apparently, I don't know if that's true or not, but if it is that may be something worth looking up.
Hahahahahaha Thats funny, Sleep, Sleeps, hahah
I split my sides when it kept wanting you to do that.
Maths was pluralised in some countries, such as the UK, because we say "Maths" as where Americans say "Math". Not sure why, just one of those quirks between our dialects.
I remember this, And had all 3
Great vid
14:59- Words to live by
😂sgsoshjsoshfkdksks
Well one of the big problems with modern TTS voices is that they do use samples instead of synth for the phonims wich limmets the inflection you can put into the pronounceation and inflection dictenary (man my spelling is bad today) one voice witch i like is actuily based off sam most of the time it's named mike or pawl with the rite reader it has good inflection. and the early 80's rigs your thinking of were based on the decktalk speech board if memory serves. (more)
Circuit bending makes me quite uncomfortable as well.
I own all 3, all original from my childhood. Got the Speak and Spell Christmas of 1988, and the Read and Math versions later in 1989. I do have the book for my Speak and Read, and also the original TI AC adapter for these.
The EVA system in Chrysler vehicles had additional circuitry to clean up and smooth out the audio a bit more to make it sound more natural.
I'll make a video response to this video this weekend.
I miss my speak and math and I'm over 40. Great tool for learning.
I never even had a See and Say, but I know what they are, I've seen them and played with them, but I never had one.
I remember then from when I was a kid, but they where very privy in the early 90th.
That video is still on RUclips. I think comments were disabled several years ago.
I still have a Speak & spell, Speak & math, Speak & read and the Ti99 With the speech synthesizer. All good as new.
I do agree with you. circuit bending is bad. My units live in glass boxes in my repairs room. I did play with them for a long time
I loved my speak and spell :) i got my speak and spell in the 80s :)
I love these toys!
(Continued) The day the SB Pro and SB16's came out with there fm speech synth was a red letter day for me :) alltho they have programs such as jaws and deskspeek as a visualy impard person i dont need every little thing red out to me. i just want what i tell the pc to read spoken. comming back to SB 16 there was an app called Text-Assist wich was WONDERFUL (i still prefer the defualt voices in it) i used it upto windows ME or XP one. it finaly had so many compatiblity problems i had change.
The Speak And Spell Compact didn't have a VFD readout, or indeed any readout as far as I know, I've not used one, but I've seen pictures of them. Electronic Braille displays are certainly around now, but they're not cheap, I don't know if braille displays were around in the early 80's though, having said that I think the TSI VersaBraille portable computer had one, but I've not used one.
There are some simulators of Speak & maths and Speak & read? In .swf files?
Yes, someone has developed assorted Flash-based emulators for the various speaking toys.
@@uxwbill...thank you. I have Speak and spell emulator in .swf file. I'm searching the other two...can you help me to find them, please?
P.S.: If you didn't know, there is a fantastic VST effect plugin, which have similar characteristics of these ending 1970s-starting 1980s wonderful electronic toys. You can see here: ruclips.net/video/bg7ACJrsqM0/видео.html
In my country Speak and spell is known as "GRILLO PARLANTE". In the 1980s this electronic toy game was successfully bought and acquired by a lot of childrens and little boys.
I still have my speak and read :) It works too! Just listening to it makes me feel like I kid again!!
I remember all the smart kids had these. My brothers and I had Mattel Football and Basketball, :P. All this talk about Math/Maths makes me wonder if there are different versions of Speak & Spell that cater to the British and others' 'overuse' of the letter "U?"
Maybe I shouldn't be asking this question, but have you ever played with or are you in any way interested in any of the children's talking animatronic cassette based toys like Teddy Ruxpin? If so, what do you think of such toys like that? Have you ever played with any of them?
There's a software called qbox pro that can encode audio to be run through the synth chip. It was developed by the people who made the Texas instruments LPC tech. It only runs on Windows 3.1/3.11 What's cool too is you can hear what the speech will sound like after coding within the software itself. The software allows for a max of 30 seconds to be encoded. I once encoded some a Capella of Freddy Mercury singing "we are the champions" One clip that I encoded made some strange results. Thing too is the coded sample audio can be dropped into audacity without importing it raw even though it's not .wav
I only ever used the speak & spell (well and the little professor). I used to get so angry that the speak & spell would invariably ask me to spell "zero," but it always pronounced it like "gyro"-the delicious greek wrap. It was years before I realized my mistake, but I always left hungry for tzatziki.
Some of the Speak N Spell's pronunciations are definitely odd. I've forgotten what they were, but I ran across some words where I couldn't tell what it was saying.
@@uxwbill I think I spelled that mispronounced word more than a thousand times. Luckily there was always Tetris waiting for us in the basement of her dark abode.
I also have that very wrong feeling when it comes to dismantling or modifying toys all the time and it is even more prevalent when it comes to toys that are or are similar to toys of my childhood.
Wasn't that the Kraftwerk song, "Numbers?"
if you look up the song HEaven says. wich is not a song about heaven at all. but its a really cool song. anyways. the lyrics were sung using the speak & spell in the middle
I've never seen a VTech machine w/ a BASIC interpreter and I've owned enough of those as a tot.
Oh, cool. I have a flat panel one that works. Also a button one that seems NOT to work, but has all the old style buttons & battery cover. AND a speak & read that works with battery cover. I was going to yard sale the speak & read and throw in the button one. Do you need them for like just postage? I won't get anything much on a yard sale, and don't want to throw them out. Little storage space. Keeping my flat panel one as I too, like it so much! Thank you for the video and explaining a bit about them. Not sure how to get ahead of you.
ahold of you.... oops. Bad speller. Imagine that.
The later generated Speak & Spell also has the earphone jack and power adaptor port
I agree with uxwbill about the zapping sound of the Word Zap game of Speak 'N Read game being comical. I laugh everytime a correct word is zapped.
You'd figure a device made by Texas Instruments would have the Texas in it's vocabulary.
i'm so deprived, i never had one of these as a kid. what i remember the most from my early childhood is the See & Say's. those were interesting. still interesting, because they use a little record inside.
Really? Did someone make Braille labels and put the on your Speak And Spell's keyboard, or did it come from the factory pre-brailled? My best friend is totally blind and he too had these toys, but his units had braille labels stuck to them, I assume his parents did that.
have you ever seen the Chryslers of the 80s ? They had a talking alert system using the same voice as the speak n spell. It's even made by Texas instruments for Chrysler. Unfortunately cars with these features are uncommon.
Hay uxwbill,
I went to my mother's home today and I remembered that I had a Speak and Spell and Speak and Read,when I plugged in the cartridge from the Spell into the Read it gave an error,But on the Speck and Spell it just ignored it.Just thought you would be interested to know.
Speak N Spell...'Makes Learning Fun!'
I've still got the Speak N Spell from my childhood...He's called Larry
Nobody is bending Larry...We've been though a lot together!
Very enjoyable video Bill...Thank You from both of us!
Larry says "Spell Question"...haha!!! :)
Hurrah, I was going to cite that as the reason it's actually more proper to say Maths but you beat me to it!
The noise I'm talking about can be heard @14:19, I know later on there's more noise when you connect Speak And Read to the stereo system and you did make a comment about that, but the noise @14:19 sounds like interference from the camcorder, but again I could be wrong. I hope you get years and years out of enjoyment out of these things. I know Speak And Spell made an appearance in your more recent soda video, but will you use them in future videos? I hope so.
Yeah, if I remember correctly, up to 8 characters could fit in the display.
One of the things I've noticed is that Mystery Word, Spell and Say It never had words containing the apostrophe. At least, even with the expansion module that my dad added to Speak & Spell.
I can also remember a TV commercial with ET that was about a module with words from the movie like "HOME".
Without a module, and if you press the module button, it could make funny noises as if it were circuit-bent. :-]
i think it is trying to say you need to sleep.
I had both versions of the Speak & Spell. I remember both of them saying "floot" instead of "foot".
Ah yes the good old Speak and Spell! Had many hours of fun as a child with the built in games (we didn't have any of the cartridges). I don't think the push-button version made it over here as all the English ones I've seen have the membrane keyboard.
The question repetition was always a laugh!
Mine's still boxed up in the loft. I was thinking of giving it to my niece when she's old enough to play with it. I wouldn't sell it even though it would probably fetch a small fortune.
Shocked "Texas" was not in there... Perhaps only Texasinstruments
***** Yah I thought it would be in there because I bet quite a few kids saw it on the device and would type it in!
There were these other talking toys from Texas Instruments called the Super Speak & Spell and Super Speak & Math and i think there was also a Super Speak & Read as well but I'm not entirely sure about the Super Speak & Read
there is a super speak & read
@@inkpastaI thought so because I thought I saw a picture of it online but out of this trio the Speak&Read was my favourite I used to have one but it stop working even with fresh battery I have the other 2 as well as the Super Speak&Math and the Super Speak&Spell but one day I hope to get another Speak&Read one day and perhaps even get the Super Speak&Read
8:55... no wonder people can't sepll
Am I dreaming or did I hear your camcorder interfering with Speak And Read at one point? I thought I did, but maybe I'm wrong.
we had one of these at our school we thought the devil was speakin in it lol
Maybe if you insert a lowpass filter into the audio line (or turn the treble all the way down on the ampllifier), the speech of the speak&read should sound even better. Also I very much like the idea of implementing breathing noises into speech synthesis. I actually had the same idea years ago, but no big software house has made a speech synth that way.
hey uxwbill, I noticed that this video of these 3 texas instruments speaking toys was uploaded before user spatsbear2's video of these toys, so how did you know about his chrysler car which talked kinda like these speaking toys?
it displayed error and refused to continue until I removed the Cartridge.
If Google Maps can do 8-bit Street View on 4/1, why not have Speak & Read NOAA Weather Radio? "ADD Y TO CLOUD TO SPELL CLOUDY."
Wow, that's cool.
Considering i rely on voice over on my ipad and a program called readplease on my main PC i realy do know how far voice tech has gotten :)
i must say tho the voice on your little mac was new and clean. the voice pack on RP is a little out of date (win xp ish) but it does have good inflection for the preticuler voice i'm using :)
It's a far cry from decktalk on the apple ii :)
Note to folks who make talking assist programs. Think of us partily sighted folks would ya :)
I think my best friend had a talking telephone toy that vaguely fits your description, if you're in any way interested, you could look into Teddy Ruxpin, I say go for it, I have several of them and I love them a lot, I've made videos about it for RUclips.
The Speak and Spell is fun to play hang man with.
I think you are thinking of Microsoft Mike (i was part of the TTS community on youtube for a while xD)
With Apple the "Fred" voice was the default voice before the "Alex" voice came out on Leopard
Wasn't this kind of toy not used in Toy Story as Mr. Spell?
I think it was a different toy based on the Speak n Spel.
You all probably knew that, just wanted to point that out.
Very interesting video Bill.
Cheers.
I don't know.
I had S+S and S+M.. Never knew there was a S+R
+John Michael Stock Production continued into the 90s and some new models appeared, including one that teaches music with simple exercises. I have one of these. There were also some "story book" speaking toys made by TI as well.
Your S+S model looks like a different keyboard, are there different versions that were produced?
+John Michael Stock Yes there are. Mine has the original, failure prone keyboard. TI revised the design by switching the membrane keyboard shown on the Speak & Read and the Speak & Math.
This has absolutely nothing to do with the subject of this video, but over the past week or so I've noticed that the RUclips player has changed and now allows you to change playback speed and video quality, but there are fewer quality settings now I see, that's something that i don't like. I see however that this video at least is using the older style player, how do I revert my RUclips videos to the older style player? I find the older player to be faster to load and it's more reliable.
Did you know there's a new version of Speak & Spell, the new one is made by Basic Fun, I hope to get one soon. BTW, I miss new uploads from you.
I think electronics and shizz have emotions. I know it's crazy.
i bet you got inspiration to do this vid from the weasel show chat
Maths is short for Mathematics. It is here in the UK anyway. Since the English invented it, ours is the correct spelling! I am only joking before people start or starts!! Words and language are a very strange thing! Great video by the way!
Mathematics is a collective singular noun, not plural, so hearing someone say "my favorite subject is maths" just sounds awkward and wrong. And if you look up the history, "mathematics" was first abbreviated to "math." (including the period); eventually the period was dropped in the 1870s, while Brits didn't start adding the S to make "maths" until the 1910s, so "math" without the S is actually the older way to shorten it.
My favourite subject is mathematic.
On the Word Zap game on the Speak N Read, you'll only hear the zapping noise if you zapped the right word, otherwise you'lll hear a buzzer.
lol, i think the the speak n read was hinting at you to turn it off... SLEEP
I suppose none of the speak units have "fhqwgads" and "qazwsxedcrfvtgbyhnujmikolp" in their vocabulary.
New monitor?
The work origin is MathematicS, thus the abbreviation is SUPPOSED TO be MathS.
Math is just how we say it in US (though it isn't technically correct).
I have them, that are in order.
what did letter stumper do?
I think it showed a word with one or more missing letters and made you guess which letters went in the blank spaces.
Great video, uxwbill!
Marshall
Ooooooh it sounds so sad when it can´t find the word in the dictionary. Poor little computer.
I remember theses. Dam time flys